6 lessons High school seniors, college and grad students
Study Skills & Note-Taking
6 lessons on how learning actually works — and the study habits that research shows beat rereading and highlighting. Use them from your first week of classes.
All lessons
- 🧩 1. How memory worksEncoding, storage, retrieval — and why rereading fools you
- 📓 2. Cornell notes and other note-taking systemsCues, notes and a summary — and when to use outlines, maps or charts
- 🎯 3. Active recall: test yourselfPractice testing, flashcards done right and the blank-page method
- 📅 4. Spacing and interleavingSpread out review sessions and mix up problem types
- 📘 5. Reading textbooks and articlesSQ3R, reading for the main idea and keeping up with long readings
- 📵 6. Focus and your phoneDeep work blocks, the Pomodoro technique and a distraction-free setup
✏️ Practice: Study planner: turn your exam dates into a day-by-day plan
About this course
Most students study the way they did in high school: rereading notes and highlighting. Research in cognitive psychology shows those methods feel productive but work poorly. Retrieval practice (testing yourself), spacing and interleaving work far better — and take the same amount of time.
The course is for college freshmen, transfer students, grad students and high school seniors getting ready for college. Each lesson ends with a practice task you can apply to a real class this week.
Questions & answers
- What is the most effective way to study?
- Retrieval practice — testing yourself without looking at notes — combined with spacing study sessions over several days. Both are among the best-supported findings in learning science.
- How many hours should a college student study?
- A common guideline is 2–3 hours outside class for every credit hour (so 24–36 hours a week for 12 credits). Quality matters more than hours: focused, active study beats long passive sessions.
- Laptop or handwritten notes?
- Both can work. Some studies suggest handwriting encourages summarizing instead of transcribing. What matters most is processing ideas in your own words, not copying every word the professor says.
- Is the course free?
- Yes, with no sign-up. Progress is saved in your browser.